


Navigation Lessons

by glorious_spoon



Series: Tumblr/Twitter Prompt Fic [46]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Multi, Podfic Available, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21619645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: The thing that Rey never realized about deep space hauls until she was in the middle of one is that—well, they’reboring.
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey
Series: Tumblr/Twitter Prompt Fic [46]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1313993
Comments: 14
Kudos: 113





	Navigation Lessons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



> For a tumblr prompt from Ruby, who asked for Finn, Poe, and Rey and navigation lessons.

The thing that Rey never realized about deep space hauls until she was in the middle of one is that—well, they’re _boring._

She’s almost appalled to admit it, even to herself. Life on Jakku was monotonous in a way that left no room for boredom, stretched between the twin suns of deadly tension and repetitive privation. Even now, lightyears and a full turn of the seasons away, a solid seven kilos heavier than she’s ever been, she remembers the way her stomach and her brain would keep up a continual refrain, hunger keeping her sharp-edged, wary, unable to relax even in sleep.

But she’s well fed now, and nothing has even tried to kill them in weeks, and she’s bored out of her skull.

Finn seems unbothered by it, but then, Finn was raised on troop transports, well-used to the monotony of deep space. He spends a lot of his time with the droids, learning to speak binary with a dedicated patience that’s as impressive as it is maddening to watch. He watches her train, sometimes, and she finds herself showing off in a way that would have led Master Luke to poke at her until she lost concentration—

Finn himself is enough of a distraction these days. Not just the warmth of his gaze and the startling brilliance of his smiles, the way he tilts his head in just such a way that she wants to climb into his lap and kiss him breathless. That’s the kind of distraction she can ignore. Has been ignoring, since the day she met him. But when she reaches out with the Force, she can feel him so bright that it’s like the entire rest of the world has faded to shades of gray.

(Poe has it too, a little—a sharpness, as if he’s just a little more real than everyone else around him. She’s seen it on some of the other pilots as well, and she thinks sometimes that the Jedi had it all wrong about the Force, about what it was, what it meant. Poe isn’t a Jedi, but he has that edge, the reflexes that are just slightly too good, the instincts that never lead him wrong if he listens to them.

Finn, though—Finn _burns._ Finn is lit from inside. Being around him is like staring into the full noontide sun on Jakku without going blind.

She knows what it means, but she has no idea how to explain it, or if she even should.)

So she trains, and she loses about fifteen games of Dejarik to Poe while Finn watches from the sidelines and cheerfully heckles them both, and she actually thinks she’s doing a pretty good job of hiding the way she’s about to crawl out of her skin from restlessness until the third day, when Poe pulls her out of her seat as soon as she finishes her breakfast and says, “Okay, you’re driving me out of my kriffing mind here, come on.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Rey protests, but she follows him anyway. Poe snorts, casting an amused glance over his shoulder as they make their way to the flight deck. “Where are we going?”

“Navigation lessons,” he says, clearing a pile of questionable debris off of the nav table with a sweep of his arm. Rey tries not to wince as the pieces hit the floor; even now, there’s a part of her mind that won’t stop calculating the value of stripped thruster parts in meal packs.

“I know how to navigate,” she says.

“No, you know how to _fly._ ”

“Same thing.”

“It’s really not.” He gives her a look that would be stern if it weren’t for the edge of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “You’re a good dogfighter, but there’s more than that to being a pilot.”

“I’m not a pilot,” Rey says, stung for no reason she can think of. “I’m a Jedi.”

“Okay,” Poe says mildly. He rests his hands on the nav table, lit from below by the blue glow as it powers up. The light carves his face into sharp angles and deep shadows, like a holo of a Resistance hero even though he’s wearing Finn’s shirt, which is liberally stained with black grease and starting to fray at the hems. There’s no point in dressing up shipboard, when any one of them might need to go crawling through the guts of the engine room at any moment. That's probably where Finn is right now, actually. “Do you want to learn how to calculate hyperspace jumps, or not?”

She looks at his expectant face, and then at the nav table glowing with starmaps and constantly updating calculations. The ship will run the standard ones automatically—the services of an experienced navigator are expensive—but that’s not why he’s asking her, she understands suddenly. She’s seen him bent over the maps with Finn, tossing banter back and forth with an ease that always makes her throat tighten with ridiculous jealousy.

He’s offering her a part of that. A way to claim her own place in a world that seems to have fallen apart at the seams.

It’s something Han Solo might have taught her, she thinks suddenly. If she’d stuck with him, if things had been different. If he'd lived.

“Yeah,” she says firmly. “Yeah, I want to learn.”

Poe’s face blooms into a sudden grin. “Good. Now.” He drags a glowing point of light across the screen. “This is us, and this is the Kaliida Nebula…”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Navigation Lessons [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25559743) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




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